I know it sounds ridiculous, but the sun
was shining through their marine.
They opened, lapping a little
in the light, and I threw myself, or maybe
I just fell, into that single blue layered
over warmth. There was no end
to the milk in that color,
no end to the dreaming flutter
that still had not forgotten
the swish of the underwater
heart, and beyond it, the rush
of the stars, the clanging blood,
so much more than the word comfort
can hold in its shifting. And just the way
a prism turning in the sun throws
colors across the room, through
my pages, over the pillow, into my empty
cup, I fell into the color of a newborn’s remembering,
tumbled under the force, losing the cynical
breath I forgot how to hold.

prod•i•gy

I have given up small pleasures for this
new darling, for the loop of his fingers
around the metal spine of my page.
I have turned away the clear heart of vodka.
I have bent myself.
Small cups of chocolate swallowed alone
have been exchanged for blue
milk in my breasts, the press of his hands.
Cognition grows bubbles
and pops, vapor against my freckled knees.
I smooth the buttons on my dress, straighten the corners
of my voice, turn the knobs of my laughter.
Have I forgotten the purpose of my songs-
the simple angles of their meter,
their twilight curlicues?

Rebecca Kinzie Bastian’s work appears in a number of journals, most recently Rhino, Pax Americana, Coal Hill Review, Pebble Lake Review and Frostwriting, with poems forthcoming from American Poetry Journal. She was the 2007 Bread Loaf Margaret Bridgman Scholar, and shortlisted for The Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press. Born and raised in Sweden, she holds an MFA from Vermont College, and currently works as an editor and copywriter in Pennsylvania. Tania Pryputniewicz’s interview with Rebecca, “Suspended in Midair: Infants, Graduate School, and Wild Swans” can be read on Tania’s SheWrites blog.